Can the University Be Reformed?

Over the past two to three decades we have seen ever-increasing government regulation of academic life. It is right that in a democratic country the people’s representatives should assure themselves that public money is properly spent and that state-funded universities are actively discharging their responsibilities. But the degree of audit and accountability now demanded is excessive, inefficient and hugely wasteful of time and resources. More fundamentally, the very purpose of the university is grossly distorted by the attempt to create a market in higher education. Students are regarded as “consumers” and encouraged to invest in the degree course they think most likely to enhance their earning prospects. Academics are seen as “producers”, whose research is expected to focus on topics of commercial value and whose “output” is measured against a single scale and graded like sacks of wheat. The universities themselves are encouraged to teach and research not what they think is intrinsically worthwhile but what is likely to be financially most profitable. Instead of regarding each other as allies in a common enterprise, they are forced to become commercial competitors….

Meanwhile, deep dissatisfaction pervades the university sector. Its primary cause is not the lack of adequate funding, for it is appreciated that higher education is expensive and times are hard. Rather, it arises from the feeling that an understandable concern to improve the nation’s economic performance, coupled with an ideological faith in the virtues of the market, has meant that the central values of the university are being sidelined or forgotten. A university education should assist students to develop their intellectual and critical capacities to the full — that is a good in itself, but it will also give them the transferable skills that will be essential in an uncertain future. Scientists and scholars should be permitted to pursue knowledge and understanding of the physical and human world in which we live and to do so for their own sake, regardless of commercial value. Out of such free enquiry comes a broader, moral concern for nature and humanity, standing in total contrast to market values. The task of the council is not just to challenge a series of short-term political expedients: it must also combat a whole philosophy.

What has happened in the U.K. — though to a lesser extent in the more diverse American academic scene — is the creation of a vicious circle. The more university education is seen in economic terms, as a means of preparing people to contribute to the financial well-being of the country, the more intent the national government becomes on controlling that education; and the more control the government exerts over education, the more it presses universities to produce graduates who can contribute financially to society. (Raise those tax revenues!) Caught in this circle, educators aren’t given much liberty to think about what a given educational model — not all models are the same — intrinsically is and what it is for; and they are given still less liberty to implement their ideas.

In America all this happens less directly, but it happens. I teach at a private Christian college, but in my time at Wheaton my freedom to shape my classes as I think best has been gradually eroded. The two major forces behind such erosion have been the need, or perceived need, to be accredited by the bodies who make such judgments and the need, or perceived need, to Manage Risks according to the dictates of our Risk Management department. Both accreditation agencies and Risk Management departments follow Taylorist principles and are therefore deeply hostile to anything eccentric, unpredictable, or individual. Every syllabus in the college should look pretty much like every other syllabus, with every possible eventuality spelled out in the same ways that they are spelled out on other syllabi, so that no student can be surprised by anything and, on account of such surprise, lodge a complaint or file a lawsuit. (There is also the problem that a Risk Management department will discern only certain kinds of risks — those that involve potential legal troubles — and will tend to be unaware that enforced uniformity of policy can put intellectual creativity at risk.)

These are not direct governmental forces, but they arise from the same centralizing, regulating, systemizing impulse to, yes, “see like a state.” Genuine education, in any sense deeper than simple training, is made almost impossible under such a Procrustean regime. I wish Sir Keith Thomas and his colleagues the best, but it’s hard to be hopeful for them.

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15 Responses to Can the University Be Reformed?

“(There is also the problem that a Risk Management department will discern only certain kinds of risks — those that involve potential legal troubles — and will tend to be unaware that enforced uniformity of policy can put intellectual creativity at risk.)”

Alan already knows this, but briefly, we’ve just completed a USCG inspected passenger sailing vessel, which includes materials and techniques never before employed on a certificated vessel. Some of these innovations were cutting edge NASA+ materials and others delved deep into history to dredge revive paleolithic construction techniques.

In either case the regulatory (state) and insurance (commerce) challenge was to present these innovations in terms of what was already understood. Metaphorically speaking, you have to make a convincing case to regulators and actuaries how many sides your die has, and how often it’s going to come up snake eyes.

Responding to Rod Dreher, Noah Millam writes:

“[Eve Tushnet] is suggesting that what you see as a “culture of permissiveness” is really, in its own way, a “culture of low risk-tolerance.” That the women she’s talking about aren’t trying to be bad – they are trying to protect themselves from making a bad choice.”

I believe this is an important insight on Ms. Tushnet’s part, and well-elucidated by Millman. This is unsurprising. Noah’s financial background gives him a better that average perspective for understanding the risk of not taking risk, and that for some types of inaction, the risks and consequences compound over time.

Great stuff, Alan. We don’t have a risk management department here at Friends–at least not an official one, per se. But the mentality is present, with the result that what you describe here is an unfortunately close fit to what I’ve seen at Friends over the past seven years.

My sympathy for professors not getting to teach exactly what they want is tiny compared to my sympathy for students today and what they have to pay to get a degree. I wouldn’t recommend anyone borrow $100,000+ to get a degree in the humanities or social sciences, unless your dad owns a business that you can one day inherit. It is a horrible economic decision. Get a library card, like Will Hunting.

Can explain why this has happened? “Cost Of College Degree In U.S. Has Increased 1,120 Percent In 30 Years”

Great point, Chris — the students are getting the shortest end of the shortest stick. It’s indefensible. And if you want an explanation, the money has gone to climbing walls and assistant deans. Colleges have been competing with one another to provide more and more “amenities” to make students feel like they’re attending a resort instead of a college; and highly-paid administrators (along with their support staff) have been proliferating even as permanent faculty positions have been cut and cut again. Students enjoy state-of-the-art fitness centers but are taught by hordes of adjuncts making peanuts who are overseen by very highly-paid administrators.

Much of American higher education is a circus that deserves to be shut down. But, as Clay Shirky has recently commented, it is also the primary means by which young Americans avoid falling out of the middle class. As bleak as the prospects look for people who graduate with enormous debt, they look still bleaker for people who don’t go to college. The numbers are very clear, but immensely depressing. That ought to change, of course: many employers who prefer or require college degrees from their job applicants shouldn’t do so. But until their behavior changes, colleges will still play the game they’ve been playing until they suffer financial collapse.

I can see both sides to this issue. Last night my husband was watching Ken Burns’ stories of the Dust Bowl on PBS. I was reminded of how open-ended his college education was, and thought the people of this country would probably never have received his contributions, if it hadn’t been.

The idea that every college should be a great university might be self-defeating. There are probably some business colleges who should have stayed such. Of course, the whole value network associated with a small college wants to climb the latter in respect and admiration, which leads to all the ranking, student marketing, and etc.

Strangely, some who fault the ranking and student marketing still want money (from somewhere) to build that nth great university. I don’t think you hear from too many who want to run a good, small, college.

Which might be why the junior colleges seem to have a special fit with the times. They’ve been playing a different game, one that has left them more modest and flexible.

“A university education should assist students to develop their intellectual and critical capacities to the full….”

Does anyone think this happens at the vast majority of universities?

I’m totally for innovation in teaching, but for most college instructors (what ever their title) teaching seems to be a more or less unfortunate secondary job requirement. We got the whole system of tenure with all the publishing and research. Most undergrads are taught by grad students making slave wages the first two years. And for administrators, it seems like building cool new buildings is the main goal.

I think another profitable view of this would be to think of Universities as little states. The people running them have the same incentives as governmental bureaucracies. In this view, governmental interfearance is simple turf wars.

Notice the word “permitted” in the quote “Scientists and scholars should be permitted to pursue knowledge and understanding of the physical and human world in which we live and to do so for their own sake, regardless of commercial value.” Does he mean “permitted” or “paid”? Who should pay scholars to pursue knowledge that may not have “commercial value”, and how much they should pay, seem to me important questions about which we scholars ought to humble rather than haughty.

matt: I honestly don’t know if that’s true at Wheaton. I’m just trying to get the bosses to let me have another bowl of gruel. 😉

cw: Based on my 30 years in the academy, I’d have to disagree with one of your point. I do of course know people who would love to escape teaching into full-time research, but the people who would rather just teach and not be pressured to publish outnumber them by, I’d guess, 5 to 1. (I’m considering the whole profession insofr as I know it, not people in just one type of institution.)

“But, as Clay Shirky has recently commented, it is also the primary means by which young Americans avoid falling out of the middle class. As bleak as the prospects look for people who graduate with enormous debt, they look still bleaker for people who don’t go to college.”

This simply does not have to be the case, and perhaps there’s a cultural aspect that you’re overlooking. I’ve made the point on Rod’s blog before: show up every day for work (even manual labor), avoid addiction, stay married, spend with discipline, and voila, you’re lower middle class, with little risk of ever experiencing material poverty. What’s more – fix enough leaky sinks & toilets, or paint enough houses, or mow enough lawns…you get the point. My old white van looks out of place in a subdivision full of BMWs & Infinitis, but I’m not the idiot with $200k in student loans. And a provide work & livelihood for 8 other family men.

A rigorous, integrated secondary education is fully sufficient.
College is a scam, except in a few specialized fields. The bubble’s about to burst.

Alan, the culprit here is not solely (or even primarily) government per se. It is obviously Thatcherism in the UK and more generally conservative marketolatry, which is the origin of “university education being seen in economic terms”. Perhaps you noticed the exodus of English academic talent to the USA that the Iron Lady accomplished starting in the Eighties? So now we have John McDowell at Pittsburgh, which is a fine thing for us, but where does it leave the broader university culture in either country? You might find it interesting to read the Preface of Michael Dummett’s Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics (I assume the rest of the book wouldn’t interest you, though perhaps I’m wrong). Dummett was a doctrinally conservative Catholic, by the way.